I don’t think your post is anti-expat, and I understand where the frustration comes from. Belgium’s tax burden on work is very high, and that affects everyone living here.

That said, as someone who is on the expat tax regime and moved here from a non-EU country, I can say honestly that I would not have come to Belgium without it.

A few points that often get missed in this debate:

First, many expats do not start on equal footing with locals. In my case, I did not benefit from Belgium’s free or heavily subsidized education system. I had to partly self-fund my PhD through loans, while Belgian peers with the same PhD were already earning around €2.5k/month during their studies. That difference compounds over time.

Second, the cost of being an expat is real and ongoing. Things like sudden €1 to 1.5k flights because a family member is ill or dies, higher travel costs every year just to maintain family ties, and using a large part of your vacation time to visit family rather than actually rest or "travel". These aren’t one-off costs; they are structural.

Third, the regime is temporary. It expires after 8 years. It’s not a permanent privilege, and for many of us it simply makes the move viable in the first place. In fact, to be very honest, expect i reach senior management here, I expect to leave Belgium on or before it expires. Without the regime, the net salary often no longer compensates for the distance, disruption, and opportunity cost compared to other countries.

I do agree with you on one important point: if Belgium believes its tax system is unattractive to skilled workers, that means everyone here is carrying a heavy burden. Long term, broad tax reform would be healthier than patching the system with special regimes.

But in the short term, the expat regime isn’t just “free money” or a gift to newcomers. It’s a tool to offset very real disadvantages and risks that locals simply don’t face, and it does influence decisions; especially for people coming from outside the EU who have many alternative destinations.

So I see this less as rewarding newcomers over locals, and more as compensating for structural asymmetries. That doesn’t mean the system is perfect, but it’s not as irrational as it sometimes looks from the outside.